Coca-Cola Company Value Stock - Dividend - Research Selection

The Coca-Cola Company is the world's largest beverage company. We own or license and market more than 500 nonalcoholic beverage brands including sparkling beverages and a variety of still beverages such as waters, flavored waters and enhanced waters, juices and juice drinks, ready-to-drink teas and coffees, sports drinks, dairy, and energy drinks. We own and market four of the world's top five nonalcoholic sparkling beverage brands: Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Fanta and Sprite. Finished beverage products bearing our trademarks, sold in the United States since 1886, are now sold in more than 200 countries.

We make our branded beverage products available to consumers throughout the world through our network of Company-owned or -controlled bottling and distribution operations as well as independent bottling partners, distributors, wholesalers and retailers — the world's largest beverage distribution system. Beverages bearing trademarks owned by or licensed to us account for more than 1.9 billion of the approximately 59 billion servings of all beverages consumed worldwide every day.

We believe our success depends on our ability to connect with consumers by providing them with a wide variety of options to meet their desires, needs and lifestyles. Our success further depends on the ability of our people to execute effectively, every day.

Our goal is to use our Company's assets — our brands, financial strength, unrivaled distribution system, global reach, and the talent and strong commitment of our management and associates — to become more competitive and to accelerate growth in a manner that creates value for our shareowners.

We were incorporated in September 1919 under the laws of the State of Delaware and succeeded to the business of a Georgia corporation with the same name that had been organized in 1892.

Operating Segments

The Company's operating structure is the basis for our internal financial reporting. As of December 31, 2016, our operating structure included the following operating segments, the first five of which are sometimes referred to as "operating groups" or "groups":

• Europe, Middle East and Africa

• Latin America

• North America

• Asia Pacific

• Bottling Investments

• Corporate

Products and Brands

As used in this report:

• "concentrates" means flavoring ingredients and, depending on the product, sweeteners used to prepare syrups or finished beverages and includes powders for purified water products such as Dasani;

• "syrups" means beverage ingredients produced by combining concentrates and, depending on the product, sweeteners and added water;

• "fountain syrups" means syrups that are sold to fountain retailers, such as restaurants and convenience stores, which use dispensing equipment to mix the syrups with sparkling or still water at the time of purchase to produce finished beverages that are served in cups or glasses for immediate consumption;

• "sparkling beverages" means nonalcoholic ready-to-drink beverages with carbonation, including carbonated energy drinks and carbonated waters and flavored waters;

• "still beverages" means nonalcoholic beverages without carbonation, including noncarbonated waters, flavored waters and enhanced waters, juices and juice drinks, ready-to-drink teas and coffees, sports drinks, dairy, and noncarbonated energy drinks;

• "Company Trademark Beverages" means beverages bearing our trademarks and certain other beverage products bearing trademarks licensed to us by third parties for which we provide marketing support and from the sale of which we derive economic benefit; and

• "Trademark Coca-Cola Beverages" or "Trademark Coca-Cola" means beverages bearing the trademark Coca-Cola or any trademark that includes Coca-Cola or Coke (that is, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Life, Diet Coke/Coca-Cola Light and Coca-Cola Zero and all their variations and any line extensions, including caffeine free Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, etc.). Likewise, when we use the capitalized word "Trademark" together with the name of one of our other beverage products (such as "Trademark Fanta," "Trademark Sprite" or "Trademark Simply"), we mean beverages bearing the indicated trademark (that is, Fanta, Sprite or Simply, respectively) and all its variations and line extensions (such that "Trademark Fanta" includes Fanta Orange, Fanta Zero Orange, Fanta Apple, etc.; "Trademark Sprite" includes Sprite, Diet Sprite, Sprite Zero, Sprite Light, etc.; and "Trademark Simply" includes Simply Orange, Simply Apple, Simply Grapefruit, etc.).

Our Company markets, manufactures and sells:

• beverage concentrates, sometimes referred to as "beverage bases," and syrups, including fountain syrups (we refer to this part of our business as our "concentrate business" or "concentrate operations"); and

• finished sparkling and still beverages (we refer to this part of our business as our "finished product business" or "finished product operations").

Generally, finished product operations generate higher net operating revenues but lower gross profit margins than concentrate operations.

In our concentrate operations, we typically generate net operating revenues by selling concentrates and syrups to authorized bottling and canning operations (to which we typically refer as our "bottlers" or our "bottling partners"). Our bottling partners either combine the concentrates with sweeteners (depending on the product), still water and/or sparkling water, or combine the syrups with sparkling water to produce finished beverages. The finished beverages are packaged in authorized containers — such as cans and refillable and nonrefillable glass and plastic bottles — bearing our trademarks or trademarks licensed to us and are then sold to retailers directly or, in some cases, through wholesalers or other bottlers. Outside the United States, we also sell concentrates for fountain beverages to our bottling partners who are typically authorized to manufacture fountain syrups, which they sell to fountain retailers such as restaurants and convenience stores which use the fountain syrups to produce beverages for immediate consumption, or to authorized fountain wholesalers who in turn sell and distribute the fountain syrups to fountain retailers.